Minutes of the Johto League Meeting
by Nubushi
Summary: Bugsy doesn't like being the second gym leader, but no one can agree on a better solution. Lance likes to look at the positive side of things—but could there possibly be a bright side to being stuck in a never-ending meeting? Light LyraxLance. One-shot fluff.


Two hours into the meeting, Lance's mind was about as far away from the polished pokemon statues and plush maroon carpet of the Indigo League conference room as it could possibly be. He had decided exactly where he wanted to go on his next day off. There was a valley tucked high in the towering slate peaks north of Blackthorn, with a stunning view of the Lake of Rage to the west. But even more than the magnificent overview of the lake framed by snow-capped peaks, it was the capricious, thrilling wind currents that drew him to the spot.

He could picture himself now, looping and banking together with Kai, his first and most beloved partner, the wind rushing through his hair as he sat astride the magnificent scaly beast, coming closer with every plummet and rise to becoming one in mind with his pokemon.

But would he devote the day to one-on-one bonding with Kai, or would he spend time with each of his dragons in turn? Come to think of it, it might be an interesting place for training. Two pokemon fighting a completely aerial battle was not something that happened much in typical trainer fights, but some practice battles in a situation that was out of the ordinary might be just the thing to get them out of their comfort zones and push their abilities to the limit.

"AHEM." Clair's faked cough, combined with a harsh kick to the ankle, shattered his pleasant daydreams, bringing his mind crashing back down to reality just in time to catch the climax of Bugsy's complaint.

". . . but because two of my bugs are in chrysalis form, I'm the laughingstock of every 10-year-old with two gym badges!" Bugsy moaned, oblivious to the standing Champion's temporary lapse of attention.

A furtive glance to the side was enough to confirm that Lance's cousin, dressed impressively as always in form-fitting leather and with her blue hair spilling in waves down her back, was glaring at him in fiery rage.

"As I've said before, I'd be happy to trade places with you anytime," Falkner said. Under the shock of azure hair that covered one eye, his face was a picture of perfect serenity.

"I don't want to go to a lower gym—and that wouldn't solve anything, they'd still be in their chrysalises at that stage," the bug gym leader countered.

"Not if you wait to let them evolve," the bird trainer suggested.

"I should really be the third gym leader," Bugsy said.

"But I don't wanna move down! I wouldn't be able to pound everyone so good!" Whitney protested, quick to defend her place in the gym rankings.

Almost down to the very words, it was an argument that everyone present had all heard countless times before.

Lance looked further down the polished expanse of wood in front of him to gauge the reactions of the gym leaders.

Morty, a sensitive and cooperative soul, had his brows furrowed in sympathy, but was silent. There wasn't really anything he could do; the Johto gyms were arranged so that more common types came first, and rarer types came last. Moving Morty and his ghosts down to an earlier gym would disrupt this order.

Jasmine, a slim, pale woman with straight, mouse-brown hair, used tough-as-nails steel pokemon that were a foil to her gentle and caring personality, making her even less capable of moving down than Morty. She looked from one face to another with a worried expression, wringing her hands in increasing distress as the argument wore on.

In contrast, Clair had her arms folded and a deep scowl on her face, Chuck had his eyes closed in meditation or perhaps sleep, and Pryce, just as Lance's eyes rested on him, let out a soft snore.

"Um." Jasmine raised her hand hesitantly. "Maybe if the three of you rotate positions every year or so? You could take turns, being first, second, and third?"

A chorus of opposition immediately filled the air.

"No way. I'd have to move all my potted plants every year."

"That would confuse everyone."

"It wouldn't be logical. Why would only the first three gym leaders rotate, and not everyone else?"

"Unheard-of."

Lance sighed. As the standing Champion—the one who carried out the administrative duties of the Champion as well as receiving challengers, a role that Lyra, like Red before her, had turned down—he was supposedly there to act as more of an officiator of Johto's meetings than anything. He commenced the meetings, called them to conclusion, and didn't take part in debates unless things got so out of hand that they needed to be called back into order.

Which, arguably, was now.

This time it was his turn to clear his throat, drawing everyone's attention to him.

"If we're going to discuss changing positions, really what would make most sense is for Whitney to be first. Normal is the most common and basic of types, after all."

He thought he was simply pointing out a rational conclusion.

He hadn't realized how badly his comment would make things go awry.

Whitney stood up abruptly, pink hair flying as she pounded the table with her palms. "Everyone's against me because they're jealous of how strong me and Strawberry Milk are!" she cried. "Y'all just have it out for me, ganging up together and bullying me! Well, I ain't gonna take that! Me and Strawberry Milk . . . me and Strawberry Milk . . ." Her angry shouting abruptly turned to a sob, and then she slumped back down into her seat as suddenly as she stood up, throwing her head down on her arms and wailing in abandonment.

Pryce's snoring ceased, Chuck opened one eye a slit, showing he was not, in fact, asleep, and Clair glared at Lance with the focused heat of a weapons-grade laser.

Used to Whitney's mood swings, Lance waited until the wailing turned to sobs and then calmed down into quieter weeping. In a few minutes she would be done crying, her mood would be as clear as the sky after storm clouds are suddenly swept away by the wind, and everything about this meeting would get better.

There was one thing he didn't understand, though, and that was why Bugsy used a metapod and a kakuna when fighting challengers. Bugs weren't his specialty, but if he wasn't mistaken, Bugsy's metapod and kakuna were already strong enough to evolve. But there was no telling what he was thinking. The deceptively youthful-looking man was a gym leader for a reason; he had an encyclopedic knowledge of bug pokemon, and in some ways was a veritable bug genius. But in other ways he sometimes failed to make connections that to other people were as simple as adding two and two. He was an odd character.

But when Whitney's sniffles ceased, it was Clair who asked the question, taking the reins of the meeting into her own hands.

"Moving on to a different subject," she said, giving Lance another white-hot glare, "Bugsy, aren't your metapod and kakuna strong enough to evolve?"

"Yes, of course they are!" he said with an affronted air.

"May we know why you don't just evolve them?" she asked, in an impressively even tone given the kinds of faces she had been making not so long ago. Although Lance could guess he was due for a chewing-out from her later, he was relieved both that the focus of the conversation had been taken back off of him and that things were back to the status quo of discussion among the Johto gym leaders themselves.

"But then I would have a butterfree, a beedrill, and a scyther. That would be way too powerful for new trainers just trying to earn their second gym badges."

"Has it ever occurred to you to use some different bug pokemon?" Clair pursued, still in that forced calm of suppressed impatience. She really was trying very hard. It was most likely because she wanted to end the meeting that she was putting forth the effort, but Lance appreciated it nevertheless.

Bugsy's mouth opened and shut. "I never thought of that," he said in an awed voice.

And there it was—the thing that was obvious to everyone else but that Bugsy had failed to notice. Maybe, Lance thought, his head was so stuffed full of bug trivia that those facts obscured everything else, like in a room so cluttered the floor can't be seen. A kind of not being able to see the forest for the trees.

But even Lance was amazed that Bugsy had failed to realize something so simple. Somewhere deep in his mind he had always assumed there was some actual sort of bug-user logic behind Bugsy's puzzling choice.

"For example, how about, a . . . a . . ." Clair's hand made little circles in the air as she knit her brows in concentration; it was clear how much of a struggle it was for her to remember any pokemon that wasn't a dragon. A brief silence ensued. "A . . . ledyba?"

"But that's so girly."

Clair gave a noisy sigh, obviously exasperated. "Do you like bugs or don't you? Aren't you supposed to love them all equally?" Her irritation was starting to show through more and more underneath her threadbare patience.

"Well, I do, but some of them give off a certain image . . . I don't want people to think I'm effeminate."

Several stares of disbelief from the other gym leaders were directed at the bug trainer. His childish bowl cut and androgynous combination of a khaki green shirt with a yellow neck kerchief, put together with his slight figure and youthful face, free of any hint of facial hair, made him appear barely into his mid-teens, and only dubiously male.

At this rate, Clair was obviously nearing her limit. If things kept going the way they were, they were due for another breakdown in the discussions.

Clair wouldn't like it, but he thought he would ask her to help Bugsy think up a new team, sometime outside of this meeting. He hated to do it to her, but it was better than letting things continue like this.

"Clair, would you be so kind as to . . ." He stopped abruptly as a sudden inspiration flashed through his mind. "I take that back—I have a better idea." Whenever Clair called in a favor from him, it tended to be an extra-long training session, in which she battled him over and over again to make her pokemon stronger. Those really wore him out. "Bugsy, I'll ask the Champion to sit down with you and think over what would be a good team for taking on challengers, that wouldn't require your pokemon to be in chrysalis form. She'll be happy help you think it through, and I'm sure you can glean something from her." If there was anyone with an encyclopedic knowledge of Johto and Kanto pokemon, it was Lyra. She might not know quite as many of the specifics of bug pokemon, but since she was a pokedex holder, he would bet she could rattle off a list of every bug pokemon in both regions, which was not something he was sure he could do.

"Thank you, Lance," Bugsy said.

* * *

Lance liked to look at the positive things, even when he experienced a setback, like when he lost his position as Champion.

So after the meeting drew to a close and he was able to make his escape at last, as Kai leisurely flapped through the sky on their way back to Blackthorn, he turned his mind to the topic of the meeting and found there were quite a few silver linings. First, even though it was later than he thought and there wasn't really enough time left in the day to get anything else done, at least they had been able to bring the meeting to a close. Furthermore, his quick save had prevented his having to be Clair's battle partner for one of her grueling training sessions. And finally, it seemed like they were finally making some progress on an issue that had been a bone of contention in the Johto league for as long as he could remember.

The moment the dragon pokemon's talons touched the ground, its wings raising a cloud of dust, he was leaping lightly off its back and pulling out his pokegear, conscious of his responsibility to fulfill his promise to Bugsy. With a swipe of his thumb, he found Lyra's number—it was always near the top of his call history, since as standing Champion, holding down the Champion's official administrative role, he touched bases with her almost every day.

"Hi Lance." Lyra answered on the first ring.

"Hi Lyra, I have a favor to ask."

"What's that?"

After giving a brief recap of the meeting, he asked, "So would you be willing to help Bugsy brainstorm?"

"Sure, I'd be happy to."

"Thanks, Lyra, I owe you one." The tension in his back he hadn't even been conscious of eased with the consciousness that this was one thing taken care of. "If there's anything you'd like me to do for you in return, just let me know."

"Why would you owe me anything?" Lyra asked, puzzled. "It's just a favor among friends, right?"

"Well, the truth is . . ." Lance said, and told her about how his near miss of almost asking Clair for a favor, and his cousin's day-long training sessions. He embellished his story of what those were like with a touch of self-deprecating humor. "After one of those, I always want to just go to Blackthorn and sleep for a week, but that time, the training session was on a Sunday, so I had to go back to the League the very next morning."

Lyra made a sympathetic noise.

"And as luck would have it, there was a challenger that day, and I was so tired I gave Kai the wrong command."

"So what happened?" Lyra prompted, interest in her voice.

"Well, fortunately, it was a scenario where I almost always use a Hyper Beam, so maybe in anticipation of that, he used Hyper Beam anyway. Then you know how they're too exhausted to use another move after a Hyper Beam, right?

"Uh-huh."

"Right then, Kai turned around and looked at me, and we just looked at each other in complete confusion . . . I never expected to see such a human-like expression of chagrin on a pokemon's face," he said, laughing.

"What did you do then?"

"I told him good job and made sure to give him his favorite berry treat afterwards."

Lyra laughed. "That's too funny . . . it's a good thing they know you so well, huh?"

"Right. Anyways, the point of all that is, thanks to you, I won't have to go through one of those training sessions this time, so if there's anything you'd like to do for you in return, you have only to ask," he said. "Preferably not a marathon 12-hour series of battles, though," he added jokingly.

"Well, in that case," Lyra said, and there was a pause on the other end. "Hmmm . . . . how about dinner?" she asked playfully.

It felt like time stopped. Lyra wanted to have dinner with him? He had never imagined that she would be interested in him in that way, given their age difference of almost ten years. But it was only a very brief moment—less than a fraction of a second—and he had regained his usual aplomb. Being asked out by a lovely and accomplished young woman so much his junior was certainly surprising, but he was well past the age of being caused to stutter by the opposite sex.

"Just name the time and the place," he said suavely.

He had never though the day would come that he would be thankful for Bugsy's complaints.

* * *

A/N: In Japanese, Whitney's way of speaking is a very thick Kansai accent. This doesn't really have any good exact equivalent, though a country accent wouldn't be totally off, but anyways, I was pretty liberal about her speech style and didn't attempt to make her speak the way she does in the English translation (it's been a long time since I played Crystal in English).

As always, thank you for reading, and if you liked what you read, please drop a line and let me know what you thought! Constructive criticism is also welcome.


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